King James Bible words are very exact, and each word has a precise meaning, which means that changing words and punctuation can and does change meaning.

We are talking about the print history of the King James Bible, and its editorial accuracy today.

So, let’s take a word we find in the KJB. How do we know what that means? Let’s say it’s a challenging word, an unusual word.

The most important thing we can do is see how the word is used at that place (the context), and also at parallel passages what is said, and also how that word is used elsewhere in the KJB.

This is where there is a difference between a consistent KJBO approach and those who look to the original languages. The proper approach is to start with and steer the course in the English.

The problem with going to the original languages is that they aren’t really going to the originals but to what lexicons say those words allegedly “really” mean. In other words, they are definitions in English, and these definitions may vary to or even disagree with the KJB words. So it’s a very dangerous place to go to.

I want to show what happens when you go down that path. There’s a preacher named Bryan Ross. He says he stands for the KJB. But the problem is, he doesn’t believe in any finally fixed English, he doesn’t see the authority of meaning in the distinctiveness of English. He’s a “near enough is good enough” kind of guy. He calls this “ball park” or “semantic matrix” approach “verbal equivalence”, which may as well mean “vibrations in meaning”.

So, instead of seeing “charity” and “love” as two different words with different shades of meaning, he claims they are just synonymous. And he does the same with other words, like “Passover” and “Easter”. (Easter is the Christian word for Passover, but indicates more than just Christ the Lamb, as it speaks of resurrection.)

The word “charity” means “love in action”, which is different from just saying “love”. Once you understand that every Bible word has a distinct meaning, you won’t be just acting like “joy” and “gladness” are the same, or again, “travelling” and “journeying”.

The KJB translators knew that the same original word could and should be translated to different English words. And the meaning depends on this flexibility, because for a variety of reasons “joy” is not “gladness”. The syllables and sounds are different, the subtleties of association, the nuance of difference in the concepts… this means that where each word is used, it is the right word to be used. And if one word, then we should not substitute for it another word.

That’s why it’s wrong to say that varieties of words for any single place are okay in perpetuity. That’s why it’s wrong to allow that the KJB can still be changed. We know that there has been a sufficiency in the grace of God in that there has been a history of some variety, but this is only to do with the past, and not an excuse to allow the same “problem”/”phenomenon” to be perpetuated in the future.

God has a finite message in the Bible, as complex and as grand as it is. So likewise God is outworking in history to have precision of words, a singular standard, as the outcome of all things. We are not living in a perpetual universe of uniformitarianism, rather, we are living in a universe that has a start, middle and end. The end is where English is established through out the world, and people are turning Christianity in some vast numbers before the end of the world.

When Jesus commanded His Church to teach all nations, that included teaching them Bible words, it actually ultimately includes the teaching of English and the KJB.

Investigating, learning and understanding Bible words is a good thing. We also have helpful resources like W. Aldis Wright’s Bible Word-Book and the Oxford English Dictionary. But remember, man can be wrong or ignorant, but God is always right. Therefore, the KJB trumps the dictionary.

To stand for the precision of the KJB words is not to stand for something labelled by Bryan Ross as “verbatim identicality”. That concept is nonsense, since English is not the same as a Greek, and a printing of the KJB now is not the same as a printing in 1611. What we are seeing is a refining and clarifying position through time, after all, people in the past did not conceive how right the KJB actually is. Now that English is global, stable and computer-utilised, it follows that the Scripture has been able to come into its final fixedness.

FURTHER STUDY

Words are important: Isaiah 55, Proverbs 30:5, 6, Luke 4:4

Words are exact: Titus 1:2, John 17:17, Luke 16:17

Teach the nations: Matthew 28:18-20, Prov. 1:23, Rom. 10:18